By: Leena Saleh
When you read a news story about a young girl getting involved
in the sex trade, what are some questions that come to mind? Did she want to make money? Does she not
know the consequences of getting involved? Was she abused at home? Notice
that none of these questions address the people directly responsible for buying
or selling sex and profiting, quite successfully, from the exploitation of said
young girl.
In a recent editorial,
Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote about Emily, a 15-year old girl
who ran away from home and became involved in the sex trade. Kristof said she became
a prostitute and abandoned her parents, who were stricken with grief when they
heard the news. He, too, tried coming up with rational answers for these types
of questions and took it once step further to insinuate that Emily had made
some poor choices. While Kristof mulls over whether other 15-year old girls
like Emily will “consent” to being sold into prostitution, pimps work on
recruiting their next victims.
Let’s take a step back and address the obvious elephant in the
room. Under
federal law, minors cannot give consent. No, as Kristof said, Emily did not
have a “gun to her head,” and yes, she seems to have “voluntarily connected
with her pimp,” but what seems to have been left out of the discussion are the proven
methods of coercion carried out by pimps, such as showing false romantic
interest, posing as benefactors, trapping victims in debt bondage, and
performing other acts of psychological manipulation. Kristof’s glaring
oversight aside, Emily is 15, well below the age of consent. So her ‘voluntary
connection’ wasn’t voluntary at all.
Kristof is not unique in his deficit of attention to the real
problem. Our culture perpetuates a particular framework: girls become victims
of sexual assault, sex trafficking, and rape; this requires us to find out what
they did to cause it. Sex trafficking
victims are often put under a magnifying glass. Their individual choices, state
of mind, and behavioral patterns are relentlessly analyzed and questioned over
and over again. Rather than being rescued from their situation, they are
re-victimized, which is exactly why federal law continues to be reformed in
order to protect minors.
Sex trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry. What
concerned parents like Emily’s have to lose is everything traffickers have to
gain. Do we want to live in a society where women and girls are purposefully
recruited, bought, sold, and exploited for years on end, only to have those who
profit (those selling and buying)
emerge completely unscathed?
Kristof’s equation for a solution comes down to dealing with
girls like Emily by figuring out why they “choose” to become trafficked. The
idea is that this will prevent pimps from recruiting them. However, there is a
more viable solution that has been backed by credible research:
deter men from buying sex by holding those who profit accountable. This will result
in a shortage of demand, and therefore a decrease in the supply: women and
girls.
For those who doubt that ending demand for paid sex is
possible, consider the study
conducted by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation that reveals
otherwise: the study found that men could be deterred from buying sex if they
faced real consequences, such as fines of $1,000 or more or public accountability
for what they had done. A deficient
demand will cripple the industry and put an end to the recruitment process,
giving girls like Emily a fighting chance.
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